History

For many years, German cartoonist Eduard Thöny (1866-1950) shaped the satirical weekly "Simplicissimus" through his expressive art. In February 2016 he would have turned 150, and Hannover's Museum Wilhelm Busch currently has a number of pieces of his 1900s oevre on display in a special ex...

Funnies like Puck, Judge or St. Nicholas were highly popular in the 19th century and New York's newspaper publishers soon took the opportunity to raise their print runs by adding funny supplements to their papers. The famous Sunday Comic Supplement was born on November 18, 1894 when Pulitz...

They are among the most influential forms of publication of the 20th century and smell of nostalgia and old paper: pulp magazines. On their colourful covers, heroes are fighting monsters, cowboys are getting ready to duel and sweet yet lightly dressed ladies are waiting to be rescued, whil...

In the mid-19th century the cultural development of comic books as an art form met with another famous social phenomenon: the California "Gold Rush". On January 24, 1848 James W. Marshall had found gold near Sutter's Mill. It didn't take long for the first gold diggers to arrive in Cailfor...

Born into an artist family on September 27, 1792, the British caricaturist and illustrator George Cruikshank joined his brother Isaac Robert to follow in their famous father's footsteps. Isaac Cruikshank was known to be one of the Empire's best caricaturists and inspired his sons' work. Ge...

A Swiss artist and teacher, Rudolf Töpffer (1799–1846), started to create "picture novels" in 1827. He reproduced his stories by means of lithography and first published them in France. And it happened the way it always does: Good stuff gets copied. Aside from the original prints a number...

Comics are trendy. They have become an essential part of the licencing and film industry and at the same time have found their way back into the big newspapers and magazines. Almost every editor who knows his trade has one or several of the best known comic book artist working for them. Th...